Quilting class

Amelia is taking a quilting class run at the local quilt shop. The shop offers this class during summer as a 'summer camp' and I asked them to offer it now for local homeschoolers, as a once a week class for 5 weeks.

Amelia had a rough start last week. The main instructor is great and patient but she had an assistant with her last week and the assistant was really rough on Amelia. Amelia had to redo a whole bunch of work, which wouldn't be so bad normally. Amelia knits and she understands ripping and tinking, so this could have been OK. But the assistant wasn't making herself understood regarding the problem or how to fix it so Amelia apparently kept making the same mistake over and over again & had to redo it over and over again. It's a tiny room so not only did Amelia feel like she was waaay behind her friends, she also felt pretty humiliated.

We had a long talk about it, I had to call the shop and chat with the main instructor, and I armed Amelia with sharp scissors and strict instructions that if the assistant should pester her again, she should get up on a chair, brandish the scissors and yell at the top of her voice "I don't understand you, you stupid old bat!" This small bit of family humour and a firm push out the door got her back to the class where she had a much better time this week.


Here are Amelia's fabrics, which she selected way back in December. The instructor precut the kids' fabrics for them so this is what it looked like when we arrived last week.

After sewing on this fab machine.... (Must not covet, must not covet. Don't even really like sewing. But I would like it on this machine! Slap on the hand. Must not covet.......)

And pressing .... much pressing!

Here's the result. Look at those corners! How did they do that???

Stacks of them all ready for next week's class when I think they'll be starting to join some of the squares.

This is going to make a farly large lap quilt of 12 blocks & I think it finishes up at something like 4x5 feet. The pattern is called Bright Hopes. It's different than some of the pictures of Bright Hopes I've seen on the web, so I guess it's some sort of adaptation. I did see something similar here and I've read that traditionally the square in the middle is a bright fabric which is surrounded by dark.

Don't you just love Amelia's fabric? I think it's turning out so great. And, the instructor said that during December, when she was cutting this fabric out to get the kit ready, a customer loved this combination so much that she bought it to make a table runner. So the instructor was thanking Amelia for helping her make a sale!